Electronic circuits, for example integrated chips, often generate one or more internal supply voltages based on an external supply voltage. For example, for generating one or more internal supply voltages one or more DC/DC converters may be used. A part of the circuit or chip supplied by such a voltage converter or other internal power supply is also referred to as a voltage domain. An internal supply voltage of such a voltage domain may be monitored for example to detect an undervoltage, i.e. the supply voltage being below a predetermined threshold voltage. In such a case, the circuit may be brought to a specific state in some cases, also referred to as reset state or error state (referred to simply as reset state in the following).
In some cases it is desirable to signal the presence of this reset state to other entities, for example to a system coupled with the electronic circuit. This may be of particular interest in cases where the system is on a higher infrastructure level than the electronic circuit. For example in some automotive applications, for such signaling a current interface may be used, and a predefined current level may be used to signal a reset state or an error state e.g. to an ECU as the higher level entity or system.
However, in some cases it may not be possible to provide the predefined current in the reset state in conventional applications. For example, when an undervoltage occurs due to a short circuit, a current caused by the short circuit may increase a current above the predefined current level.
It is therefore an object to provide possibilities for maintaining a desired current level, for example a predefined reset level, in such an error case.
It is a further object to provide possibilities for signaling e.g. an error, fault or failure to an entity coupled to or in communication with the electronic circuit, such that the coupled entity can be reliably informed about error within the electronic circuit.